(Video)
By world standards, the Dutch are wealthy and healthy, but the country's changing. With each year, it's home to more Dutch elderly and more young immigrants from the developing world.
The queen opened a parliament once again wrestling over health care, still trying to contain costs after a massive overhaul designed four years ago.
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Covers an important, timely subject. Provides mostly factual information, while avoiding judgmental/biased/loaded language. Only (minor) criticism: could provide more context for the statistics it quotes. As a story about the Netherlands and its healthcare system, it is fair and informative. And that's how I personally approached the story. The title and a (very) few lines in the piece, however, suggest that this is part of a larger, normative argument about the future of US healthcare. Whether or not this system would work in the US-- in a comparative manner-- would require more information, especially more discussion about how the US and the Netherlands compare/contrast. Arguments based upon analogy, after all, depend on comparable circumstances. Update: PBS, in its follow-up report, did in fact address some of the "comparative" questions. The complete series of reports matched the title "Netherlands Health Care System: Model for the US?" much better than just this one segment.
